Divorce Records As Public Documents by Law

As mandated by law, records of people in various forms are considered as public documents. Therefore, to no surprise divorce records are obtainable by anyone so long as the requesting party has valid grounds to perform the request. However, the rules and policies on how they are administered vary as per the respective ruling of every state and county. Therefore, applicants should first inquire on how to go about doing an application for divorce reports at the state or county level. The Freedom of Information Act is a general law which allows the public to search on legal information but there are also succeeding laws which should be adhered to in order to not violate anything along the way.

At first, public records are only maintained at the State level. Thus, people had to spend quite a few days before the business is transacted at the office concerned. Plus, the processing time was considerably lengthy because it all had to be done manually. Despite being known as a public record, it does not mean that people can anytime pull it up. A law which protects the privacy on anyone has been enacted which means that a separating couple can actually appeal that their divorce records should be sealed for the purpose of not divulging to other people their custody battles or unveil their assets during the legal separation. There are certain sensitive data which are advised not to be revealed and that becomes possible with the support of an existing decree.

But then again, not all States imposes the same policy of forbidding those other than the names on the record to access such information. The premise in regards to this case would be to grant all citizens the privilege to execute a background check on someone, specifically checking on the real civil status of the other person. By doing so, future relationships will be protected. Some places permit the access to divorce reports simply because the said records show the cause or causes why a person got divorced. Nobody wants to get hurt in the end, that’s why it is better to have a character reference on anybody more especially for those who are in a romantic relationship. These are few of the reasons why such files had to be granted.

Acquiring a copy of a divorce record is never a hard task to do; you can generally do a public records search by coordinating with the designated department under the state where the report can be found. Usually they call the department as the Vital Records Department or the Department of Health. To proceed, you need to contact them via phone, email, fax or simply by a personal visit for initial inquiries as to how to get started. It normally comes with a fee which serves as a service charge and not for the information that you are trying to retrieve from them.

Hence, there’s no doubt at all that divorce records are also public documents which are accessible provided that certain guidelines are met and laws are adhered to from state-to-state or county-to-county basis. Today, it has become even much simpler to execute the search with the aid of an online records service. It is a paid service that you can count on more especially when the records are used for a very crucial undertaking.